​Join me (Seth Werkheiser) for a 90 minute interactive workshop on the endless decisions that come with running a newsletter in 2025.

​Should you import your list to Substack?
What should you put in my welcome email?
Which analytics even matter?
Should you switch platforms?
What the heck is SPF/DKIM/DMARC?!

​Instead of writing, we’re getting lost hours in CSV files and platform settings instead of actually connecting with your readers.

Wednesday, August 27 from 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

Get more info here: https://lu.ma/uqrfb65q

In today’s Mini Escape Pod Zoom call, a member was talking about leading virtual co-working sessions. They had a sales page set up with their Square Space site, and (to avoid having to upgrade their Square Space plan) they linked out to Gumroad for payments.

They had an email list of 700 people, which is a great place to start! I suggested they also reach out to some people personally, too, since not everyone reads every newsletter, and it’s good to just directly invite people to things you’re starting (I did this initially with my Escape Pod Zoom calls back in 2023).

They brought up maybe paying for some classified ads. Spots that are relatively cheap via assorted email newsletters, and usually a good “customer fit” for this sort of thing.

The only thing I cautioned was to figure out their own invite / newsletter flow first.

Figure out how to get a few people to go through their paid process first. Get a few customers into the flow first, and make sure things are moving smoothly before injecting any paid traffic into the system.

The last thing you want to do is spend money on a “leaky” sales process.

UPDATE 8/14/2025: Just wanna stress that there’s a lot of talk about funnels, and paid ads, and “driving traffic” on the internet, especially wrapped about making sales. That’s sort of what I’m talking about, but at a much slower level. We don’t need to “drive” 1,000 people to our sales pages right away. Heck, if we get 10 people to click over, that’s great. And that’s what I’m talking about here. Get 10 people to your sales page. Maybe two sign up. Hey, that’s a 20% conversion rate, and in internet terms, that’s good. Sure, you’ll learn more from 100 people to visit, but start with 10. Be content with learning on a monthly schedule, not an hourly one.

Had another chat with Angela Hollowell (Please Hustle Responsibly) all about the benefits of spending our time away from social media, content ownership, and lots more.

Angela talking about spending your time wisely:

“I could be on social media, making a big deal that I’m going to be here and doing all these things. Or I could just let the people who want to be on social media stay there, and focus instead on the relationships that matter — the ones that aren’t dependent on social media.”

It’s “Not My Business” season again.

A year ago Olivia Rafferty declared that some things were not her business:

Things That, As A Substacker, Are Not My Business

1. How many subscribers I have? NOT MY BUSINESS
2. The current state of my header/footer? NOT MY BUSINESS
3. Whatever is happening on my welcome page? NOT MY BUSINESS
4. The growing pile of unread newsletters in my inbox? NOT MY BUSINESS
5. How many emojis I use? NOT MY BUSINESS
6. The leaderboard for Culture? NOT MY BUSINESS
7. Substack Chat? NOT MY BUSINESS
8. My Notion database for future post ideas? NOT MY BUSINESS
9. My open rate? NOT MY BUSINESS

Social media, and lately the newsletter busy-ness industrial complex, has us spinning our wheels on so many things that are not our business.

Things like open rates, deliverability, A/B testing headlines, churn, soft bounces and hard bounces, email lists spread across multiple CSV files – really, it never fucking ends, and most of us ain’t making enough to sweat all the finer details.

Photographer Wesley Verhoeve suggests suggest we “Leave Grace Notes,” in his post ‘What a Burger Restaurant Taught Me About Creative Work.’

“Guidara’s team believed in ‘grace notes’: small gestures that surprise and delight. A remembered wine. An extra dish.”

This from the book “Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Guidara.

“In our (photography) world: a behind-the-scenes Polaroid. A thank-you zine. A note weeks later saying thank you for the opportunity and trust.

These don’t scale. But they stick.”

I’ve say this in slightly more profane way in “Maybe you don’t need more subscribers,” but the core idea remains: things that don’t scale can resonate.

Marketing our work isn’t just about logos or brand colors, it’s about how we make people feel.

Rachel Karten speaks with the little joy coffee shop, focusing on their social media strategy, but I think the main point applies to how all of us talk about our work, despite which medium we use.

RK: What advice would you give to a local business that is trying to find success on social media?

CL: Social media is replacing television. And just like in television, there’s the shows you tune-in to watch and there’s the commercials you suffer through. Stop making commercials. Be the show.

Did you see it? “Stop making commercials. Be the show.”

One of the longest running TV shows isn’t about the contents of storage containers, it’s about the stories that weave around them.

Telling people that we have a show coming up is a commercial.

Planning, booking, the travels, the build up, talking to fans, borrowing gear, making the flyer for the show – that’s the story.

We don’t need to start making videos, we need to tell better stories.

Start DM’ing with five like-minded folks about the work you do and you won’t need to go viral.

“Here’s the thing about small, quality audiences: you never know which conversation will start the chain reaction. Which episode will reach the one person who changes everything… in the age of infinite content, finite and intentional might be the most radical choice,” Yancey Strickler

A great example of this is the story Joi Katskee told in one of our Escape Pod Zoom calls:

“I texted probably 15 people about the show rather than posting on Instagram, and maybe over half of them showed up. They were like, Yeah, I’ll be there. Thank you for the invite.”

Get seven people to a show on a Tuesday night and watch the magic unfold.

Some good thoughts on working in collaboration with other people.

“Community is such a source of nourishment. Sometimes we may believe that we are creatively blocked, but really we’re just cut off from the nourishment of community,” Giselle Buchanan

“Our laptop wants you to work on your music alone. And the (usually exaggerated) hype around a lot of records is that they were done all alone by somebody in their bedroom. That’s fine for some people. But most musicians seem to do their best work in collaboration with other musicians, each one bringing their own strengths to the game. Embrace collaboration if you can,” Dan Wilson

“The creative status quo has made us lonely content machines. Pressured to post with unnatural quantity and frequency. To pursue our livelihoods and express our work. We play someone else’s game,” New Creative Era

This can be sending an email and asking for feedback, calling a friend to think through a problem, or getting on a Zoom call with some like-minded folks to talk through a challenge.

I did this recently with an email I was trying to write. I sent it off to two people, and their feedback got me unstuck.

Expand your work and possibilities by pulling people into your creative orbit.